


Fall In

by Jalules



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Fluff, Friendship, Gen, Introspection, Siblings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-10
Updated: 2013-01-10
Packaged: 2017-11-24 08:57:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,659
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/632656
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jalules/pseuds/Jalules
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"You fall into place beside him, collapse over the foot of a bed and it feels right."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fall In

**Author's Note:**

> Sort of an old piece, reposted from tumblr during an attack of Strider feelings. Could be a bit shippy if you like that sort of thing.

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It shouldn’t be this easy.

The rational part of your brain, the part that says not to walk in front of traffic and tells you the girl in the horror movie going into a dark room alone is about to get offed, the part that grunts “fire, hot,” and tells you to deflect a harsh comment with a joke so it doesn’t hurt so bad- that part tells you you’re being a complete idiot.

And you know it’s right. Your sense of self-preservation screams at you to stay alert, stay focused, while the scraps of your dignity are clawing up your throat to get their say, to stop you from slipping into life as a doormat or a desperate fool or whatever you were before you realized maybe you could be something _else_.

But there’s another part, somewhere that feels suspiciously like your heart, that doesn’t seem to care.

You pretend like your mastery of time actually lets you put the past behind you, let the change of scenery take you out of your old home completely, fall into something new.

You fall into place beside him, collapse over the foot of a bed and it feels right.

You watch bloated pastel ponies from the 1980s fight the threat of evil sludge, make snide remarks and drink in the soft laughter of a response. You get closer.

You let yourself believe he’s different, that he’s not going to push you off the bed just to see how gracefully you land, that he won’t push you at all unless you start teasing him about his sick longing for cutie-marked ass, or leave crumbs in his bed.

You let yourself believe he’s your brother, really start to feel it, and it shouldn’t be that easy but it is.

 

You figured he’d take one look at you and bolt faster than a deadbeat dad walking in on his baby mama holding up three screaming infants and a court order for child support, figured he’d kind of done just that the moment he bolted off your current meteor hometown and into the void of space.

You assumed that when he showed up again, if he showed up again, he’d be all about high-fiving alien chicks and saving the day. Cool stuff. Heroic stuff.

And he is all about that. But he’s about other things too, quieter things, dorkier things. He’s altogether way more and way less intimidating than you ever could have imagined, and when he finally stands in front of you, face to face, he’s the first to raise a hand for a fist bump.

 

He speaks softer than you, not so sharp, so abrupt. You can see him calculating everything that comes out of his mouth, and when a sentence runs too long he trails off, starts up again like he has to pause and consider.

He’s scary smart, scary _scary_ , but he offsets it with a lot more tender loving bullshit than you would have expected.

He compliments you on the dumbest shit, all uncomfortably, sickeningly sincere, and he smiles.

He _smiles_ , which is something no one else seems to even see and half the time you think you’re imagining it, but there it is. Any time you make a snarky comment, he smiles. When Rose pulls out a line from the book of embarrassing Freudian shit and you stammer over what you were supposed to fire back with, he _smiles_. When you walk into a room he’s sitting in and after a second it sinks in that you’re both actually there, occupying the same place, he smiles.

And it’s not just at you (you know damn well you’re not the only ray of sunshine on this tour of the universe’s most mind-numbing hellscapes,) but you’re the only one who can’t seem to get over this shocking revelation.

Dirk Strider smiles. Who knew?

You’re still working on smiling back.

 

Talking is easier. You’re good at talking. You ramble, non-stop, for twenty minutes at a time, and he listens. Well after the point anyone else would have gotten up and walked away, told you in uncertain terms to shut your fucking trap already, he listens.

And when you pause and try your hardest to swallow your tongue because _holy shit_ , you cannot shut up ever, he takes over and responds, reacts. He holds a conversation with you and none of it is about preparing, about training, about fighting.

It’s light-hearted and funny and _awful_ in places, disgusting, and you take turns making each other pull faces.

It’s like bonding or something.

 

Not that you don’t fight. When no one’s around and you’re in the mood, when you’re comfortable enough and he doesn’t look like he could kill you, you start a fight.

You nudge him one too many times, reach over and ruffle his hair, rile him up just enough that he pushes back, lashes out.

You dart around one or another room at lightning speed, wrestle each other to the floor in epic, clumsy battles of will and it’s so dumb, like you’re a pair of kids. Like you’re brothers on a sitcom, trying to make each other say uncle and making up at the end of the episode rather than two dudes floating through space, testing the waters to see how this all fits together.

A scuffle is easier for you, familiar. The sting of scrapes, of pulled hair, brings you back and gets you angry, excited. 

He’s not too keen on it, but then, he’s not exactly touchy feely. Not at first.

He feels his way too, experiments till he finds what makes you stop, makes you stumble. He puts a hand on your shoulder like a coach, like a friend, like what you guess a brother is supposed to be, and the warmth of the gesture makes you want to curl in on yourself.

He leans into you when you sit, rests his head on your shoulder and it’s probably inappropriate, definitely a little weird, but it makes your heart race, then calm, a moment of panic before a slow, heavy peace.

You feel his pulse pick up too, fast from the moment he rests against your side, tapering slowly off till he seems unlikely to run, till you’re breathing in time with each other and nearly drifting to sleep.

You want to ask one of your friends if this is what siblings are like but there’s no one who’d know. You’re the only one who ever had a Bro, which is different from a bro, different from a brother, and your stock of knowledge on family relationships seems lacking, skewed in places.

 

You study him during a meal, when he’s picking at food he won’t eat and pretending to pay attention to conversations while he reads the insides of his shades.

You can see the resemblance more now than you ever could in your own corner of the universe. Against him, you never measured up. Against Dirk, if you squint, the difference isn’t so extreme.

In him you see a reflection of your bird-bone structure, thin and light and ready to leap at a moment’s notice, your own slightly downturned mouth, a dubious expression you thought was all your own, plastered to another face. You take note of your own hands and your own nose and your own _teeth_ and there’s no doubt in your mind that this guy has your genes, that you have his.

When you tap your fork against the table, _tip tip tap, tip tip tap_ , put together a beat, he matches it with a knife in his own hand, _tippa tippa tap, tippa tippa tap_.

You play like kids at the dinner table, _are_ kids at the dinner table, and when he smiles at you, sly and scheming, you smile back, easy as if you’ve been doing it for years.

You slouch the same way when you receive the same reminder to stop playing with your silverware, equally aggravated to be mothered by a sister, but you think that’s more coincidence than biology.

You don’t entirely trust the ectobiology thing as it is, even if Roxy has your eyes and Rose’s impish grin sometimes finds its way onto Dirk’s lips. Bloodlines are a bunch of bullshit, especially here, where no one’s sprung from any loins, but just sort of plummeted through the atmosphere in patchwork messes of ghost imprints and burning rock.

 

Regardless, it means something.

When his arm is pressed close to yours, shirt sleeves riding up as you get comfortable in a new position on the bed, you know its familiar skin you’re touching, familiar blood moving underneath it all.

You know that you share something, even if it’s a pointless something.

You finish his sentence, interrupt with an idea of your own but it slides so gracefully over the thought he was working through, he doesn’t complain.

You operate on the same wavelength half the time, stare at each other in confusion when you’re at completely different ends of the spectrum, come back together to laugh at the same things no one else thinks are funny.

You don’t hold it against him for the times he never kicked your ass, and he doesn’t make an issue out of how you didn’t get a chance to never be there.

You curl into yourselves and curl up to each other, stay close on your bed and speak in hushed tones when your nearest neighbors are all asleep.

You joke that you’re acting more like sisters in a sappy romantic comedy than brothers on a video game space mission, he tells you you’re being kind of a sexist pig.

You tip your head, touch temple to temple, and don’t argue the point.

You are insanely comfortable.

It shouldn’t be this easy to like him, to feel right with him, to forgive and forget and to fall into habits, to settle in beside him.

It’s damn near impossible to get up again.

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End file.
